Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Controversy in the ETU champs

What happened? If you check the video, it appears that the guy in white is blocking the guy in blue. The guy in white is the Pom boy, the blue boy is Gomez. The blue guy is not doing any visible effort to dodge the obstacle and swim towards the rest of the field, but the video is not great quality.

Gomez was not happy about it, and referees have given him some credit, as the brit was disqualified.

The matters opens the question, though, of where do you draw the line. Races at the elite levels are about medals, points for the athlete, points for the country and a bit of argy-bargy about who’s top dog. Wether the purists like it or not, there's obvious team tactics involved.

Drafting races see many times younger guys sacrificing themselves and working hard for the big boys who can later run a sub 33, which is where you need to be these days. Not many breakaways succeed, and when they do is because someone didn’t pay attention or the race was not that important. Is the drafting part of triathlon becoming more of a team sport and this incident is just one symptom?

So, I ask, where does the line need to be drawn? An athlete is penalized for blocking another athlete. Doesn’t that happen at any race at some point or another?, doesn’t it happen often in a 30 or plus guys bunch riding or running into a 180º turn?.